it’s just me…funny like that…

~for touka, just because…~

my foibles are little pretty doilies,
all dressed up in preparation for
getting stained, as is their due,
their birthright, for they wait in
service for the slippage and the
crumbly stains of strange lyrics

wait! this poem has. gone astray,
my intention to make confession
about my quirks which are more
than numerous, repetitious, and
a little crazy, which is why my very
few friends delight in homaging me
”still crazy after all these years…”

‘tis truth, for better or worse, I’m
not superstitious but don’t step
on cracks or any lines between
the in between, always retrieve
pennies on the street, cause the
Benny Franklin about a penny
earned makes smile because
he stole it from someone prior,
and it goes with friends in the
tip jar at my corner bodega,
where they save me
a raisin scone,
knowing full well, i may not appear
till quite late, or never on bad days
when the poem urges kick me out
of bed, and inspiration is a 3am
pastry…

make me repetitive cups of java all
de day long, wander around from
zoom
to room doing odd-jobs, thisnthats,
never recalling where my muggle is
sojourning till I hear the call of the
microwave “here,  here ye old man…
where else would I be so lovingly
reheated?”

put my wallet, watch, spectacles &
testicles (an old rhyming) on the nite
stand in prep for the next day, but oh,
the keys have their little own ceramic
cup lest they scratch the ochre stain,
and I catch holy hell, so ipso-facto, I
am more often than not locked out…

we won’t talk about the too many times,
my phone has gone astray (1j many
countries where recovery was hardly
assured, but have never suffered its
loss, or consequential identity theft,
but then again, no one seems to
want to steal my name, till Paul Simon
up and done it, after sitting next to me
on a Redeye flight from LA to NYC.(1j

it drives me nuts when pompous men
pontificate on the obvious but forget
to pull their tie up to mind the gap tween
knot and the top button, making their
words look..how shall I say it…sloppy,
and my shouting out at the television
at the sartorial stupidity of news “anchors”
for naughty

Making to do lists is my artistical métier,
which only grow longer with age and the
wisdom that their purpose is to taunt me,
my failures to face the difficulties that
reverberate in my guilty conscience, so
that when I remember something to do
and actually do it because the deadline
has passed and I fear her wrath of and
disappointment
which is worse than
disapproval
which I can often
dismiss
with a historical, practiced, “easy peasy”

and if said item even doesn’t appear on my
lists (plural), I add it and derive copious pleasure,
when I cross it out with great
red inked celebratory deliberateness…

ok, okay, (you choose) I’ll wrap and rap it
up, as I go on too long as children oft tell
me when I’m being regaling with my stories,
(is there a point to this story?)
well because…it’s

just me…funnily like that


(1) somewhere on HP is the poem/story

another diurnal marker attained,
but no one will be issued a
Boy or Girl Scout badge,

an unverified few will remark,
"this is a day that counts
my halftime voyage
circulating the sun,"
but detect no
other difference tween
day prior, day after,
and will let the passing thought, pass into the fibers of their
existence, aling with the millions of others that humans create,
then let lay,
absorbed into their uncountable,
uncollected collective

but it is the divisor!
the median mark
of a year,
and the world Earth
will be however old it be,
plus a half, like some of its
inhabitants

to be X plus a half,
is not an indifference,
a halved year is
better than no more years,
a solitary tear
still marks the moment
of a moment,
a refraction pointillism,
to reflect a passage

so treat it
not!
with
cavalier,
but go off and pause,
in a quieting places within,
and think,
I am more,
greater than before,
and with grace elevated
will complete my space
occupied on this rotund,
robust earth,
and
be thankful for the embers of
oxygen in and ex
ha(i)led,
greeted,
stating
this breath next
is an opportunity,
and will spent it
usefully

"I write for the ordinary souls
who can't always sort out the
meaning in all the metaphors and analogies
that grace more sophisticated formats.

Indeed,
together we have
struggled over
the potholes of existence
and in my case,
heath,
but it's nice to not be alone
on the weighing
to the way

I do welcome your company.
I try not to complain
and be down,
but it's a struggle I often lose.
You can call me on it,"

by
Anonymous
<>
R*esponse:

a kith & kindred soul,
to I,
as well,
*who too,
whose
soul is still
crazy after all these years

our pathos paths cross
but lit~er~ally
but
we are
allied as well

simple *simpatico
and
words interestingly
suffice
when
suffering
is cognizant
and the parallelism
is truly
literal,

anon!

(You!
can call me in it)

~for M. G.*~
who discerned in a

witty three words,
my essence, perfumed~

<>
we all have in our own(ed)
personal debtors prison,
a chained inner child
asking always:
Am I there yet ?

sad smiling,
a 'no you are not,'
for to freedom day to arrive,
the child must unlock the chains,
no one else can be
permissioned!

someday he'll, rebelent,
will comprehend that
wishing insufficient,
asking nice,
once, thrice, millions
can’t break
the padlock,
And you have to walk away from the inner child,
Leave it to starve
Leave it to die
Leave it to be free
And just a regular grown-up guy!

So saddened
There will be no return
There will be no funeral
No keepsake memories
For the keeping
No capital letters
Just a path
Large yellow arrow pointing
This a way
Bluntly and without fuss, un accompanied by any special invitation,

You leave behind the writhing child
plodding forward,
Slightly offkilter, slightly off balance,
But no longer writhing,
Just drifting from the course,
Ever so slightly
Which is drama plenty,
But there is no morning mourning for the child left behind